It’s spring cleaning time; don’t miss these maintenance musts

It’s that time of year: Spring cleaning time. You’re probably going through boxes, donating clothes, power washing the driveway, and cleaning the grill.

You were supposed to change the batteries in your smoke detectors a few weeks ago, and you should be checking your downspouts, but how many of us are really doing what we should around the house to keep it in good shape?

Those normal checks that we should be doing are vital to keeping our families safe. We all know we should be doing them, but most of us get caught up with Little League, or work, or just life in general. But it’s the little things, the things we’re most likely to blow off, that can end up costing us big.

How often do you check your dryer? Not the lint trap on the top, but the vent and the pipe on the back? This is an every six months kind of check, but I hadn’t done in five years. I never thought about it until this week when the dryer stopped working.

When I finally checked the pipe, there was a huge bird’s nest in it that blocked it completely. I also found five years worth of lint caked on the floor and the wall. I discovered I was heading toward a dryer fire. It would’ve been only one of the 15,000 or so that occur the U.S. every year.

Darrell Hay, the owner of Safe and Sound Home Inspection, said he sees neglect like this all the time.

“The dryer is trying to push air through there, hot air, and it gets to the point that it gets so hot that it can physically set the lint on fire,” said Hay. “And then your pipe is on fire, and if it’s a vinyl-type pipe it can also burn, and you can literally burn your house down that way.”

So that’s a fail for me on the routine check on the dryer. It got me thinking about what other forgotten home items I should be checking, but never do.

Hay told me to check in the garage.

“Furnaces are the most neglected appliance in the house,” he said. “People don’t think about it, and they don’t have their furnace serviced by a heating contractor until it breaks. You not only can be putting yourself in danger because of improper venting of the exhaust, but you’re also potentially trashing your furnace.”

Count me two for two on the idiot meter. I consider myself a smart guy, but I made this mistake last year. I hadn’t checked the furnace filter for years. It was so full that the furnace motor blew trying to push hot air through it. Cha-ching.

The other big item people rarely check is the deck.

“They’re supposed to be bolted to the house, not just nailed,” Hay said. “Where they have faulty flashing, the water can get in from the rain and rot that connection between what’s called the ledger, between the house and the deck, and if it’s not bolted and flashed correctly, you can and will have deck collapses.”

I probably would have failed on checking this one too, but I don’t have a deck.

So this is just a gentle reminder from me to you to check all those forgotten places and appliances you have been blowing off for years as you get into your spring cleaning.